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Star Indian javelin thrower Neeraj Chopra is set to begin his 2026 athletics season at the Doha Diamond League 2026 in Qatar on Friday, after organisers confirmed his inclusion in the competition's entry list released on Monday, according to Olympics.com.
The Doha event will be Chopra's first competition of the 2026 season after spending the off-season recovering from a back injury during a training camp in Switzerland. His last competitive appearance came at the World Athletics Championships 2025 in Tokyo last September. Confirmation of Chopra's participation comes shortly after he was provisionally named in India's 32-member athletics squad for the Commonwealth Games 2026. This will mark Chopra's fourth straight appearance at the Doha leg of the Diamond League. The two-time Olympic medallist won the Doha meet in 2023 with a throw of 88.67m, finished second in 2024 with 88.36m, and set a national record of 90.23m last year, though he was edged into second place by Julian Weber. The men's javelin competition in Doha is expected to feature a strong field. While Olympic champion Arshad Nadeem has been withdrawn after initially being listed, Sri Lanka's Rumesh Pathirage, the current world leader, will compete after producing a remarkable 92.62m throw at the Rome Diamond League 2026 earlier this month. That performance moved Pathirage to eighth on the all-time world list and made him the second-best Asian performer in history behind Nadeem's 92.97m effort at the Paris 2024 Olympics. The field will also include reigning world champion Keshorn Walcott, former world champions Anderson Peters and Julius Yego, as well as Curtis Thompson and Olympic and world silver medallist Jakub Vadlejch. The Doha meet is the seventh stop on the 2026 Diamond League circuit, which will conclude with the season finale in Brussels on September 4 and 5. (ANI)
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